THE GREY SISTERS
ALTHOUGH many of the great ladies of Paris had enrolled themselves
among the Ladies of Charity and were ready to help Vincent to the
utmost of their ability, much of the work to be done in that great
town was hardly within their scope. The care of the sick in the
hospitals alone demanded ceaseless labor and an amount of time which
few wives and mothers could give. There was a gap which needed
filling, as Vincent could not but see, and he took immediate steps to
fill it.
The instrument he required lay close to his hand in the person of
Louise le Gras, a widow lady who had devoted her life to the service
of the poor. She had gathered in her house a few young working women
from the country to help her in her labors; these were the people
needed to step in where the Ladies of Charity fell short. A larger
house was taken on the outskirts of Paris; good country girls who were
ready to give their services without payment were encouraged to devote
themselves to the work, and Louise le Gras, with all the enthusiasm of
her unselfish nature, set to work to train the little company to
efficiency.
Of one thing this holy woman was absolutely convinced--unless the
motive with which the work was undertaken was supernatural, neither
perseverance nor success could be expected. "It is of little use for
us to run about the streets with bowls of soup," she would say, "if we
do not make the love of God the object of our effort. If we let go of
the thought that the poor are His members, our love for them will soon
grow cold." To pray, to labor and to obey was to be the whole duty of
the members of the little sisterhood. The strength of their influence
was to be the fact that it was Christ to whom they ministered in the
person of His poor.
To many of these girls, rough and ignorant as they were for the most
part, life in a great town was full of dangers. Such work as theirs
could only be adequately done by women whose lives were consecrated to
God, who were prepared to spend themselves without stint or measure in
His service. "If you aspire to perfection, you must learn to die to
self" was the teaching of their foundress.
Louise le Gras was a soul of prayer, and she knew that more was needed
than fervent philanthropy and a heart full of pity to give the Sisters
courage for the lives they had undertaken to lead. Uncloistered nuns
were at that time a thing unheard of, and in the first days of the
little company the Sisters were often greeted with insults when they
appeared in the streets. In Vincent's own words, they were "a
community who had no monastery but the houses of the sick, no cells
but a lodging of the poorest room, no cloisters but the streets, no
grille but the fear of God, and no veil but their own modesty."
Their life was hard. They rose at four, their food was of the plainest
description, they spent their days in an unhealthy atmosphere and were
habitually overworked. The life of a true Sister of Charity needed to
be rooted and nourished in the love of God, and no one realized it
more completely than Vincent himself. In his weekly conferences, when
they met together at St. Lazare, he would set before them the ideals
of their vocation, bidding them above all things to be humble and
simple.
"You see, my sisters," he would say to them, "you are only rough
country girls, brought up like myself to keep the flocks." He
understood their temptations and knew their weaknesses, but the
standard was never to be lowered.
"The Daughters of Charity must go wherever they are needed," he said,
"but this obligation exposes them to many temptations, and therefore
they have special need of strictness." They were never to pay a visit
unless it was part of their work; they were never to receive one; they
were not to stand talking in the street unless it was absolutely
necessary; they were never to go out without leave.
"What?" Vincent makes them say in one of his conferences, "do you ask
me to be my own enemy, to be forever denying myself, to do everything
I have no wish to do, to destroy self altogether?"
"Yes, my sisters," he answers; "and unless you do so, you will be
slipping back in the way of righteousness." Their lives were of
necessity full of temptations, and only in this spirit could they
resist them.
Life in the streets of a great city was full of interest to these
country girls, and it required a superhuman self-control to go about
with downcast eyes, noticing nothing. At the weekly conference one of
the Sisters acknowledged that if she passed a troop of mountebanks or
a peepshow, the desire to look was so strong upon her that she could
only resist it by pressing her crucifix to her heart and repeating, "O
Jesus, Thou art worth it all."
One day Vincent appeared among them in great joy. He had just met a
gentleman in the street, who had said to him, "Monsieur, today I saw
two of your daughters carrying food to the sick, and so great was the
modesty of one of them that she never even raised her eyes."
It was many years before he would allow the Sisters, however great
their desire, to bind themselves by vows to the service of Christ in
His poor. When at last the permission was given, the formula of the
vows, which were taken for one year only, ran thus:
"I the undersigned, in the Presence of God, renew the promises of my
Baptism, and make the vow of poverty, of chastity, and of obedience to
the Venerable Superior General of the Priests of the Mission in the
Company of the Sisters of Charity, that I may bind myself all this
year to the service, bodily and spiritual, of the poor and sick our
masters. And this by the aid of God, which I ask through His Son Jesus
Christ Crucified, and through the prayers of the Holy Virgin."
Although vows taken thus annually did not imply a lifelong dedication,
the Sisters of Charity who returned to the world were few. Many heroic
women spent their lives, unknown and unnoticed, in the daily drudgery
of nursing the sick or trying to maintain order in country hospitals.
"The saintliness of a Daughter of Charity," said Vincent, "rests on
faithful adherence to the Rule; on faithful service to the nameless
poor; in love and charity and pity; in faithful obedience to the
doctor's orders . . . It keeps us humble to be quite ordinary . . ."
"For the greater honor of Our Lord, their Master and Patron," runs a
certain passage in their Rule, "the Sisters of Charity shall have in
everything they do a definite intention to please Him, and shall try
to conform their life to His, especially in His poverty, His humility,
His gentleness, His simplicity and austerity." Therein was to lie
their strength and the secret of their courage; before them stood
their crucified Lord, bidding them suffer and be strong.
The "Grey Sisters," as they were called by the poor, not only nursed
in the hospitals of Paris, but went far and wide on their errands of
mercy. Scarcely a day passed without an appeal. After the siege of
Arras in 1656, Louise le Gras was implored to send help to those of
the inhabitants who had survived the horrors of the war. Only two
Sisters could be spared to meet the requirements of eight parishes;
dirt, disease and famine reigned supreme; yet one of them, writing to
her Superior to tell her that the other had been obliged to stop
working from sheer exhaustion, says: "I have never heard a word of
complaint from her lips or seen anything in her face but perfect
content."
A little later the Sisters were sent for to nurse the wounded soldiers
in the hospitals of Calais. "My dear daughters," said Vincent, as he
bade them farewell, "be sure that, wherever you go, God will take care
of you."
Only four could be spared, and the soldiers were dying in scores of an
infectious disease. It was at the risk of their lives that the Sisters
went among them, and two out of the four caught the infection and
died. When the news reached Paris, there were numbers eager to take
their place, and the four who were chosen set off rejoicing.
The hospitals all over the country were in need of reform, and in
Paris every new scheme for the relief of the poor called for the
Sisters' assistance. In the hospital at Marseilles they were tending
the convicts; when the home for the aged poor was instituted, it was
under their government; the Foundling Hospital was in their hands.
Wherever there was need for zeal and self-denial, there these devoted
women were to be found, ready to lay down their lives in the service
of their neighbor. They had renounced what pleasures the world might
hold for them for a life of toil and discomfort; their sacrifice was
hidden; they lived and died unnoticed.
"We have no knowledge of our way except that we follow Jesus," writes
the Mother and Foundress of the company, "always working and always
suffering. He could never have led us unless His own resolve had taken
Him as far as death on the Cross."
In 1641 the Sisters of Charity had taken up a fresh work, one which
lay very close to Vincent's heart, the teaching of little children. It
should be, he told them, as much a part of their vocation as the care
of the poor and the sick, and they were to spare no pains to give
these little creatures the solid Christian teaching which nothing can
replace.
As the years went on, many ladies of noble birth enrolled themselves
in the company, working side by side with their humbler sisters in the
relief of every kind of misery; but daughter of peer or of peasant,
the Sister of Charity was and is, before all else, the daughter of God
and the servant of the poor. Louise le Gras rejoiced one day when she
heard that one of the Sisters had been severely beaten by a patient
and had borne it without a murmur. She, their Superior, and a woman of
gentle birth, led the way in that humility which was their strength.
She had been trained by Vincent de Paul and had learned from a living
model.